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Do you see the world as easy or hard? It’s going to make a difference in your results. You see, I grew up on a dairy farm. We milked cows. We came home from school and had chores that would go until late evening. We worked all through the summers, through the heat. It was hard, hard, hard work. So now, when I’m working in an office and somebody asks me to do something, I think, “That’ll be easy,” because in contrast, I haven’t worked a day in my life since I got off the dairy farm. You see, it’s how you perceive the world, whether it’s hard or easy, that will make it either hard or easy. Our worldview shapes our results.

So I’ll never forget a time when a friend of mine taught me this. She said, “Every time someone asks you to do something, ask yourself this, What would I do after I hit the easy button?” Brilliant! You see, all of us can ask ourselves, “Instead of complicating this in my head and instead of feeling burdened by something, what if I interpreted this as being in the flow, and creating the results, and making it happen?”

Do you have healthy distance in the workplace? What is healthy distance?

It means that you get to disagree in a productive way. Some of the best organizations I’ve always worked with, the executives will always say to me — “It’s almost like a bloodbath when we come in and we discuss an idea; but when we walk out, we are holding hands and singing kumbaya. We make it safe to disagree, and nobody does the pouting or complaining or your are not listening to me or play any of the mind games”.

Instead, they stay in the game and attack problems and never people, and no one gets to play the victim.

Are you someone who is bringing healthy dissidence to the game? Both in challenging ideas, not people and allowing yourself to be challenged in a way that you are productively making it safe for that to happen. By doing that, you will create much better ideas, and much better results.

In life, I find people are either breathing life into life or they’re sucking it out, and at every moment of every day, you’re that person. You’re never creating a neutral experience. So when you’re given the chance to deal with something, realize that no matter how bad it is, you could be approaching it in a way where you’re breathing life into life, and saying, “Okay, that happened. Not so good. We’ve got to recover on this one. What are we going to do?”

Notice how different that is compared to, “Oh, my gosh. Nobody told me this. This is never going to work. Nobody ever cares about me.” Hear the difference? Be the person who has a spirit that conquers all and is bringing positive energy to the team as being the person they can count on to always bring a good and happy, unconquerable attitude to work every day.

What if you could create a safe place for your CEO to be? Now that sounds funny, but I can tell you that one of the things that I am committed to in my life is making it safe for CEOs to be CEOs. You see, there’s a popular belief in organizations that when something’s wrong, blame the boss. They get blamed for everything anyway. That’s just how it is. But when a CEO loses their ability to lead and make an impact, they can’t take an organization to great places.

The revenue suffers and when revenue suffers, so do payroll dollars. So I realize that CEOs are imperfect beings, and yet, they deserve the respect of being influenced and supported. So today and everyday going forward, think to yourself, “How can I encourage my team? How can I, myself, make sure that the CEO is supported in their leadership so that they can lead you to great places?”

If you have a business, you’ve got problems. Most managers point out the problems to people who can’t do anything about them, but there’s another way. Watch this video to discover how to get problems handled.

Have you noticed that sometimes things go wrong?
Exactly. If you have a business, you got problems. So, you were not hired to point out all the problems to people who can’t do something about it. In fact, that’s being very negative. And if you’re doing that, you’re really taking energy out of the organization. Instead, take negatives and roll them up in the organization. In other words, never talk to your peers or co-workers about something that’s going wrong. Instead, go to the person who can make the difference and bring a solution, alternatively. As Thumper used to say, “If you can’t say nothing nice, don’t say nothing at all.” Be the positive force that creates change, not the victim who is complaining about what is. Of course, those things will go wrong—it’s a business. Get comfortable with that but own your power of bringing solutions every day to the right people who can make an impact.